JUDY VALENTE: At the age of 84, Tom White has led a full life.
A Harvard graduate, he won battle stars as a paratrooper in World War II, came home to raise a large family, was chief fundraiser in the Northeast for John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign, and became a multi-millionaire as president of a heavy construction company.But today, Tom White is best known as the man who gave away virtually his entire fortune -- about 75 million dollars.
TOM WHITE (Industrialist): I've taken care of my wife and my children, so everybody's okay. What's the point in having any other money? You see something like 9/11 and you realize there are no guarantees. So, do it now. I have this sense of urgency -- take care of things immediately because I could be dead the next day, or the people I want to help could be dead.
VALENTE: White's generosity has helped many people over the years, but none perhaps more than the people of Haiti.
In 1983, he was an anonymous donor to a hunger project directed by a young man named Paul Farmer. Two years later they would meet -- White was then a 64-year-old executive; Farmer, a 24-year-old medical student, brash and skeptical.
Dr. PAUL FARMER (Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology, Harvard Medical School): I had these assumptions. Here's a titan of a local industry from Boston. I had preconceived notions of what he'd be like. I hadn't met anyone like him -- still haven't to this day. What struck me after the first couple of hours was that he was so moved by what he saw in Haiti.VALENTE: White teamed up with Farmer to form "Partners in Health," which operates this hospital in Haiti's central plateau. Over the past two decades, White has given more than 30 million dollars to Farmer's hospital and clinics.
Dr. FARMER: The conditions there are truly intolerable for the majority. No roads. The biggest problem, I think, is a lack of food and water. Half or more of the patients we see in our clinic are patients who are sick because they don't have enough to eat, or clean water to drink.
Mr. WHITE: The only way in life -- to go through life -- is to look at things from the bottom up. You can never appreciate how bad things are for the truly poor and marginalized unless you do get down to that level and look around.VALENTE: White saw the suffering in Haiti as an opportunity to put his Catholic faith into action. Many people of faith, he says, still don't "get it."
Mr. WHITE: Even the apostles had a tough time getting it. To get it is to realize that this is our mission on earth: to help other people. Part of it's religious and part of it's that I have a natural empathy toward anybody who is suffering. I don't care who it is.
Dr. FARMER: People ask, "Well how do people survive in Haiti?" Well, they don't. They die.VALENTE: Thirty thousand Haitians died of AIDS alone last year. Measles, polio, pneumonia, and tuberculosis are still significant problems.
Dr. FARMER: We say at the end of the day, we've made it through, we got the patients seen, and we saw a lot of patients, and diagnosed a lot of treatable disease. When you do that, treat it -- you have the tools, you influence people's lives on a daily basis -- I think that's very significant.
VALENTE: He has left his children stock in his construction company, but no money. They have told him they are proud of what he has done.
Dr. FARMER: Tom has been that person. Tom has been that person for 20 years.
